I didn't know it at the time, but when I was in Maine, the Goat Island lighthouse in Kennebunkport was being restored and I guess it still is...But whatever- When I was there, they were in the process of building the fog bell tower (as I realized after I saw the pictures in Lighthouse Digest) The only photos I could get are fuzzy...

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"Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships." -Charles Simic"Lighthouses are more useful than churches." -Benjamin Franklin

I have been there when it was an operational light station with a keeper and a fresnel lens in the lantern. This was the last light in Maine to be automated. I am glad to see fund raising for repair and restoration has been successful.

There was one incident that happened there when a young coast guardsman spent his first night as relief keeper. He had been previously told that a very unfriendly ghost who often visited the island. The poor guy paniced and and called for help. They had to go get him off the island in the middle of the night.

For being on a low flat island it is difficult to appreciate this lighthouse from the customary view from the mainland. The Marinas aerial photos of this light show the layout of the station that can not be seen from Kennebunkport shore and one can greatly enlarge each photo to observe the details.http://marinas.com/view/lighthouse/97_Goat_Island_Lighthouse_ME

A boat would be really great! A boat on a trailer. To view a lighthouse from the ocean in a boat is viewing as it was intended to be observed by mariners. It is difficult to find ocean side images for many lights, some of which have each been photographed many hundreds of times. Portland Head for example. Another example is below in a rare photo. Can you identify the light?

A small boat would be better. There really is not a very good place to land a plane on Goat Island. Land maybe, but take off? Not!

Seriously, a small boat on a trailer would work. There are 18 lights in Penobscot Bay in Maine. Only a few may can be readily seen from land, some only partially and several lights not at all. There are many places to launch a boat in this region.

The lighthouses in Maine will remain for many years so you have time to plan a visit in the future and time to learn the history of the lights before you view them. Knowing the history makes the visit much more meaningful. The best sources of Maine lighthouse history are Jeremy D'Entremont The Lighthouses of Maine and Candace Clifford Maine Lighthouses: Documentation of Their Past. (They have to be the best. I contributed to both. ) Really they are the best because both were very well researched.